The Corel adventure begins.

Corel Painting No. 1: Martian Battle
Scene from pulp novel "A Princess of Mars"
by Edgar R. Burroughs
(author of Tarzan)

Time to Completion: A million years.

By the time I finished this work I was convinced I was actually on Mars. Because humans had evolved into space capsules and had teleported themselves there using mind control.

That's how long this took to look somewhat... um.... decent....

(detail)

So this is Painting no. 1 in my May Paint-a-thon! The final brush-up (boom-boom) before I head off to London. Towards the end of the painting I was already getting faster about selecting and using the 9 million brush sets, and I think the biggest pain was mainly in finding which ones worked for me and which ones didn't. I still love photoshop, though, not because in compares in scope but for its simplicity and expansive brush tweaking. (Not to mention easy to pirate brush sets! : D )

So to recap we have:
Muddying, check
Long completion, check
Computer tan, check.

May will be interesting because I'm going to be spending it just working on my portfolio. No restaurants, night shifts, student parties, Wii or etc. etc. etc. Just drawing. And packing the one box I'm allowing myself to move-- which will probably just have my monitor and shoes in it.

On the upside, I'll fit right in in England because of the computer tan!

Video Up... Finally!

Speedpainting regime No 1: Space ship. Time: 45 minutes.

Two things... first, I am undertaking a SPEEDPAINTING REGIME. Basically, where I don't see the sunlight until I improve my photoshop articulation. Second, I have finished the Zombiematic at last! You can see it here:


http://fractalbot.com/videos/zombie1.html.

Also just wanted to say that after many days of using the program Corel Painter X, I have experienced nothing but difficulty. Is the learning curve a bit high on this program? (this coming from someone who works with Maya... ) At first I was impressed by the millions of tools available but after trying to do some painting with it got quickly overwhelmed! It seems that the painting app is so realistic, it actually muddies your colours... just like in real life. Though that aspect was one I hoped Corel wouldn't emulate.

Ah well. As my high school art teacher once said, if you want to learn how to paint, sit down and do 10 paintings and then you're ready to learn. I think my disgust is founded in the fact that in Corel my work looks like it's reverted to what I was doing two years ago, with no wacom tablet, and without the right glasses prescription.

So ten Corel Paintings? We'll see how it goes.